Caribbean

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu went on a Latin American tour on February 11-14 taking him to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba - the countries that maintain stable allied relations with Russia in the field of military cooperation. An agreement on conducting joint military exercises was signed in Venezuela. Russia and Nicaragua signed an intergovernmental agreement on a simplified procedure of Russian Navy warships’ visits to the ports of Nicaragua. An agreement on development of military-technical cooperation was concluded during the visit to Cuba...

It is important to pay attention to the events in Latin America. Not only are the events there indicative of regional changes, but they are also indicative to events in Eurasia. The US decline in the Middle East and Washington’s increasing tensions with the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China are playing out in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America...

In the XX century the developing countries tried to change the trend with the help of the USSR. The Group of 77 (the Non-Aligned Movement - NAM) applied efforts to overcome the legacy of colonialism and neo-colonialism. The Declaration for the Establishment of a New International Economic Order (NIEO) on May 1, 1974 meant to be a revision of the international economic system in favour of Third World countries... Today there are some signs signaling the revival of attempts to establish a new world order in the interests of the countries that belong to the periphery of world capitalism. The establishment of BRICS and the consolidation of the periphery countries within the framework of G20 are the examples of such activities... One more initiative to repay the damage inflicted on the poor South by the rich North was put forward in 2013 by the members of CARICOM... 14 Caribbean countries coalescing under the CARICOM banner took a unanimous decision to join forces and demand compensations from former colonies «for the lingering effects of slavery»...

It has been the policy of the Barack Obama administration to oppose the granting of independence by European colonial powers to any more territories in the Caribbean. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told the leaders and people of six Dutch territories in the Caribbean in July 2013 that the Netherlands was prepared to grant independence to the islands but that the United States was adamantly against the idea... But how far has the Obama administration and the freewheeling Central Intelligence Agency gone in order to prevent any newly-independent nations in the Caribbean? Some suggest that under its thuggish director, John O. Brennan, the CIA engaged in political assassination to help drive home its point...

Russia intends to take a more active role on the international arena, including in the Western Hemisphere... Over the past decade, the Russian government has made significant efforts to rebuild and further strengthen Russia's position in Cuba and Nicaragua. A stable political dialog with Havana has been established on the highest level. The former (USSR era) level of strategic partnership has been rebuilt... Russia and Nicaragua renewed economic ties and military cooperation after the return of Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Sandinista revolution, to power...

...Evidence exists that there are atomic warheads at the British military base on the Falkland Islands and the means to deliver them. So with the full knowledge of the Pentagon, the conditions of the Treaty of Tlatelolco on the creation of a nuclear-free zone in Latin America and the Caribbean are being ignored... This aspect of the issue had always worried Brazil, since 90 percent of their trade was carried out across the Atlantic. The situation is now even more complicated due to the discovery of rich oil and gas reserves in the territorial waters of Brazil and Venezuela, and US oil companies want to be involved in their development on a priority basis... According to experts, a complex scenario by the Pentagon to provoke a war between Columbia and Venezuela is ready and just waiting for its time to come... But will the Obama administration really embark upon the large-scale destabilisation of South America?

President Obama ran for president in 2008 on a promise of closing down the U.S. prisoner detention center at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Recently, Obama went back on his word by ordering closed down the State Department office in charge of closing down the detention camps. On January 22, 2009, two days after Obama was sworn in as president, he issued an Executive Order that stated; «The detention facilities at Guantánamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.» Four years later, the Guantanamo detention centers remain open...

The United States, rather than embrace its own Caribbean cultures in the Florida Keys and New Orleans and its surrounding bayou country, has adopted a policy of treating the Caribbean as a «soft underbelly» of the United States where the only things that matter are a constant military presence and an assurance that the nations of the region follow the United States foreign policy lines and maintain the financial status quo that permits wealthy American businessmen like Mitt Romney to hide their assets from the U.S. tax man...

The Caribbean states, witnessing the economic prowess of Brazil and the nationalistic fervor of Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, see a chance to break free from decades of domination by the United States and European colonial powers intent on keeping their toeholds in the Caribbean region...

In a recent decision, expected for final adoption in March 2012, on overseas countries and territories or OCTs - the term "colony" is no longer used in globalized «Newspeak» - the EU now insists that a collection of four EU member states' overseas dependencies «spread all over the world» must be less "dependent" on Europe but must be maintained as "strategically important outposts»... For the United States, EU maintenance of its «strategically important outposts» is important in the Pentagon’s grand design to be assured military access to the outposts in the event of regional and global wars...

...The disagreements between the Obama Administration and Netanyahu do not signal a divide between Israel and the US. The strategic relationship between Israel and the United States is still intact. Nor does the gap between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party over Netanyahu’s March 3 speech reflect divisions between Israel and the US as much as it represents divisions among the US political establishment, specifically between the realists and the neo-conservatives...

03.03.2015

Mahdi Darius NAZEMROAYA

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a social scientist, award-winning writer, columnist, and researcher. His works have been carried internationally in a broad series of publications and have been translated into more than twenty languages including German, Arabic, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Polish, Armenian, Persian, Dutch and Romanian. His work in geopolitical sciences and strategic studies has been used by various academic and defense establishments in their papers and defense colleges for military officers. He is also a frequent guest on international news networks as a geopolitical analyst and expert on the Middle East.